Down and out: Memphis is magnet for the homeless

More seeking shelter at home street home

Katie Kitchin, executive director of the Community Alliance for the Homeless, goes into the community on Fridays to help those in need. In Court Square, she gave gloves and hats to Tim Webster, 39, (left) and Kendo Welch, 44.

Katie Kitchin hands out snacks in Court Square. She also points those in need to a soup kitchen or temporary housing.

When Ron Bezon took over the soup kitchen at St. Mary's Catholic Church in 2002, he dished up 34,000 servings during the year.

This year, he expects the number to hit a record 90,000 servings, from 6 a.m. snacks of coffee and doughnuts to soup and sandwiches later in the morning.

It's part of the menu of the down-and-out in Memphis, where the rolls of the homeless would fill the Orpheum theater more than two times over.

Designated by this year's census figures as the poorest city in the country, Memphis added a few people to its homeless rolls recently. One was a woman sleeping in her car in her mother's driveway. One was a woman whose company cut her hours; she could no longer pay her rent. One was a man, a former car salesman, who now sleeps in his car.

"It's different people now. It's not just people with alcohol and drug issues," says Kelcey Johnson, associate director of Hospitality Hub, one of the city's main support groups to help people suddenly facing hunger and life on the streets.

Johnson says Memphis, once a place where people came to find work, still attracts people from surrounding areas who hope for jobs or help.

"They are coming here in droves," he says.

Some, like boxcar nomads of the Depression era, move on to other cities. Some are given bus tickets to join relatives or friends in other cities.

"There are so many moving parts," says Johnson, who estimates 80 percent of the city's homeless are from Memphis.

They soon will be competing for jobs with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

When people are referred to him, Johnson says, he struggles to find even seasonal work for them. Mail carriers add package delivery workers during the holidays. He was grateful this month that HoneyBaked Ham had just added 35 temporary jobs to help meet demand during Christmas.

The economy is the biggest "driving factor" in the homeless numbers, says Katie Kitchin, executive director of the Community Alliance for the Homeless.

The total count of the homeless in Memphis last year was 5,456. It went up to 5,803 through September, the end of the federal fiscal year. The $2.3 million in federal stimulus money the city received this year stands to drop to $300,000 next year, Kitchin says.

Like the Hospitality Hub, every agency looks for help through grants and relies heavily on contributions from churches, donations from individuals and food from restaurants. Still, those in need often sell blood or plasma to pay for basic necessities or a $6 fee for a cot or mat for the night at Union Mission, Johnson says.

At the Metropolitan Interfaith Association, the city's central intake point for the homeless and those in need, the number of requests for help paying utilities went from 5,790 in 2010 to 6,944 through November of this year. Requests for help to pay rent went from 5,980 last year to 7,991 this year.

Workers in the field had noticed that people were moving in more frequently with relatives or friends to avoid living in a shelter or on the streets, but say lately that option has been less available.

"We've had a fairly significant increase in numbers of people who were in situations where they had doubled up. Then something happened," says Caprice Snyder, vice president in charge of families in crisis at MIFA.

During the summer, when utility bills are high and children are out of school with no access to free school lunches, there is a spike in demand for help, she says. The numbers drop in spring and fall when people can continue to live in homes or apartments without utilities.

When aging relatives or friends with few resources are no longer able to care for the homeless, it is women who fare the worst.

"I have never met a single homeless woman who hasn't been assaulted or victimized," says Kitchin.

And their children suddenly contribute to a range of negative statistics, with low grades, high dropout rates, and behavioral and health problems, says Kitchin.

In spite of the growing numbers of the homeless in Memphis, other major metropolitan areas, including Nashville, are faring worse. Memphis last year had a rate of 24.3 homeless people per 10,000 population, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It is almost half the national average rate of 43 in cities of 500,000 or more. Nashville had a rate of 36, and Atlanta was the highest rate at 114.

Kitchin says Memphis has a tradition of families doubling up, "and housing costs here are much lower than in other cities."

Bezon at the St. Mary's soup kitchen speculates that on top of other urban ills, Nashville's high rate was affected by failed musicians who risked it all to become country music stars. Atlanta's rate is affected by "snowbirds" migrating north and south in summer and winter, he says.

Memphis and Shelby County have created a formal "Action Plan to End Homelessness in Memphis and Shelby County." It adopts U.S. Housing and Urban Development recommendations to move away from transitional housing for the homeless in favor of permanent supportive housing programs. Studies show that permanent housing, including affordable rental housing, has saved money in city after city.

Currently, more than 65 percent of Memphis beds are in transitional housing, including shelters and treatment facilities. With transitional housing, about 10 percent of beds typically are occupied by the "chronically homeless," who exhaust about 50 percent of resources, according to the action plan.

Kitchin says part of the shift to permanent housing is based on psychological theories about decision-making. Much of transitional housing is abstinence-based, but Kitchin says human nature rejects "being told what to do."

Given a chance to make decisions on their own, people begin to feel better about themselves and try to improve their lives, or to "self-actualize," as psychologist Abraham Maslow suggested in the 1940s and 1950s. Kitchin says HUD has adopted the theories and is promoting them by reserving more funding for permanent supportive housing.

When the Community Alliance for the Homeless did its annual count of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless in January, it found a 17 percent increase from 2010, compared with a slightly more than 2 percent increase nationally.

"A likely reason ... is probably a combination of factors, including the high rate of unemployment and poverty but also due to our relatively late adoption of housing first strategies compared to other parts of the country," Kitchin says.

FOR HELP

Call (901) 260-HOME (4663) to access resources and shelters for the homeless.